Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the combined efforts of social distancing and #stayathome to keep our communities safe and healthy, most shops need to temporarily close their doors. Especially small- and medium-sized businesses are already hit hard and in a miserable economic situation. The city of Saarbrücken as well as Saarland, a smallish German federal state bordering France and Luxembourg, are no exception: the local retail scene is in clear danger.

#mirsinndo (Saarland dialect for “We’re (still) here”) is a lightweight, non-profit and free platform for local shops and small businesses. It helps communicating their “newly established” services a little easier in times where owners (and their clients) don’t know about what comes next. Some offer free deliveries by e-scooters, others online lessons. A local hairdresser even delivers hair colors. People are getting inventive.

In an effort to also support upcoming type design, the site uses two Future Fonts: Fancy Gig for headlines, reminiscent of local corner-shop lettering, and monospaced Arnold for everything else to evoke a feeling of friendly correspondence.

The site runs on smallvictori.es, a file-based CMS running out of a shared Dropbox folder.

The Weleda Gravidarium (pregnancy calculator) is a tool for midwives. It was published by the midwife department of Weleda AG in the spring of 2018. Unlike most gravidary discs with little more information than the expected date of delivery, it is intended for professional usage.

The color-coded outer wheels divide the information into ultrasonic values (blue) and pregnancy-related appointments (orange) and are attached to a slightly larger (14cm diameter), inner calendar wheel. They both have a pregnancy week calendar on their rim. If the first day of the last period is aligned correctly with the outer calendar, all the relevant dates of the pregnancy, such as examinations (illustration: Joni Majer), screenings, and the expected date of delivery are highlighted. Blood sugar information and fetal dimensions (in median values) can be checked as well.

The main typeface of the gravidary disc is Gemeli Micro by Jean-Baptiste Levée and Yoann Minet of Production Type. With its characteristic ink traps and large x-height, it works well in rough printing environments and in very small sizes. It is a good match for the 5.5pt all-figure tables, printed in UV-offset on PP material. When used in abbreviations, Gemeli Micro is set in all caps with generous spacing.

Gemeli’s x-height was enlarged, extenders shortened, stance widened, spacing loosened, and forms simplified. Combined with pronounced ink traps, these compensations not only help Gemeli Micro work at sizes south of 8 pt, they also make for unique headlines and word marks; Production Type’s logo is a case in point. This version comes in three weights with italics, along with many of the functional aspects from the base Gemeli family: alternate glyphs for ‘a’ and ‘g’, a variety of ligatures, and extensive language support. (Source: productiontype.com)

New Weleda, Weleda’s corporate display typeface, is only used for the calendar month names.

New Weleda’s roots lie in the typographic designs of Walther Roggenkamp (1926–1995), who had a lifelong interest in anthroposophy. Roggenkamp — a graphic designer, set designer, and painter — started to work with Weleda in 1956.

Over the years, he was responsible for Weleda’s logotype, color style, packaging design for both cosmetics and medicine, booklets, a corporate newspaper, a calendar and, of course, a first version of their corporate typeface (together with Ingrid Liche, one of Roggenkamp’s employees). If I can find more reference material, these items may find their way into a future post on this site. Walther Roggenkamp continued to work for Weleda and oversaw the first digitization attempts of his corporate typeface in 1989. He passed away in 1995.

The first digitization, performed by Roggenkamp’s student Andreas Sauer (who today runs RoSchriften and publishes the other Roggenkamp type designs) with Ikarus-M in 1989, was in use until 1995. An artistic change in Weleda’s design direction then led to the abandonment of the original corporate font in favor of a “new” version: New Weleda. At this time, Walther Roggenkamp was not involved anymore.

Since September 1995, New Weleda has been used for the titling of product names and medical plants in packaging and corporate communication. Ingrid Liche released her own interpretation of the original Roggenkamp design under the name FF Liant in 1995.

Philipp’s work is divided into two sections: an area for full-length documentaries (with their own pages) and a grid view for his daily client work. Yellow subtitles help navigating (“Go Home”, “Play movie!”) and provide additional information, such as project titles. In the future, we plan to expand these subtitles to dynamic comment on the visitor’s behavior: Is she scrolling? Is he moving his cursor to certain things? Is she clicking, waving, searching, playing, reading?

As soon as the subtitle idea came up, it was clear which font to choose.

On the website, each documentary film has its own page with custom background colours (or gradients) and film credit information. Visitors can explore back and forth through the documentaries by clicking previous and upcoming titles in the black band above the documentary.

The herbs of the province, “Ahh, the great outdoors!”, eighty fingers playing improvised music: Kräuter der Provinz is the latest installment among about 30 releases of Datashock, a music project based in Saarlouis (Saarland, Germany).

Kräuter der Provinz was released on May 25th of 2018 via Bureau B, who are also the home label of Krautrock legends like Conrad Schnitzler, (Q-)Cluster, Moebius, H.J.Roedelius or Peter Baumann. It is Datashock’s thirtieth release since the collective founded in 2003 (depending on the source, the numbering may vary).

In December 2014, eight friends and collaborators met at Oettinger Villa:
“Pizza delivery number dialled, bottles opened, lights, camera, action. Machines bleep, a violin cries out, a clarinet howls, guitar and bass weave their way around the drums. The spell lasts for several days, then the postmagic goes back in the box, the recording is done.” (press release by Salvador am Ei)

The gatefold double LP is printed in three colors (PMS Gold, Pastel Rose and Hunter Green) on glossy cardboard. The front cover shows a golden Messiah-like figure (a Datashock guitar hero at age 19). The typography uses Lÿno Jean throughout. This typeface, designed by Karl Nawrot and Radim Peško between 2009 and 2012, is set in various colors, sizes and interlocking grids for all media. The Lÿno typeface family was introduced in the booklet Newer alphabets: Another introduction for a programmed typography, itself a supplement of Korean magazine Graphic #16, “Type Archive Issue” (Winter 2010). James Langdon wrote:

Digital production permits us to exploit the mutable and the itinerant. These are the characteristics of a maturing digital language. We can build unstable alphabets. […]
These characters negotiate the digital freedoms of their production through playful typologies of form. They are open and various, and their spirit is this: to resist normative tendencies and to reject the idea of definitive form.

The black album labels indicate the sides 1, 2, 3 and 4 with huge numerals. These numerals, derived from Lÿno, also appear on the insides of the gatefold cover where they form two mystic symbols.

Since the LP has two bonus tracks, the CD and promotional CD-packaging have a slightly differenty layout on the back cover. We simply striked through the tracks that did not make it onto the CD.

In the meantime, friends of Datashock produced two video clips. One of them provided inspiration for the cover of the digital single “Langustenclown (am Atlantik)”. The other one (“Hullu Gullu, wir liefern Shizz”), recorded during the aforementioned release party, features cameo appearances of all Datashock family members, including us designers Cone (right) and Manu (left) — check out the GIF!

June 2018: The first pre-orders were sent out with a surprise gift: We asked Knust (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) to print a limited edition poster on their infamous Risograph A2. An auto-translated poem and a family picture (out of the “Hullu Gullu…” music clip) come together in overprinting fluorescent pink and grass green colors.

Further design work for the Kräuter release includes a tour shirt, printed in 2 silkscreen colors, and numerous digital flyer or banner files for social media usage and their bandcamp page. All of them derived — some more, some less — from the original LP artwork and all of them, of course, use Lÿno Jean only.

On October 12th, 2018, Flares released their new record Allegorhythms via Barhill Records. The 12 inch vinyl record comes in a die-cut cardboard cover and is set in (very small) Dia Black by Schick Toikka.

“In our minds, Allegorhythms is the creative peak of four years intense songwriting. We always try to evolve as a band. So we took all our love to early and current Prog-stuff, Shoegaze and Post-rock and mixed it with our idea of music.” — Flares

Our friend Paulette Penje asked us to design a small website and matching business cards for her artistic practice. Her briefing was very specific: The website should display a video artwork, but as in a physical gallery or museum, the viewer should enter at a random timestamp. The business cards should be lickable.

Update:
In September 2019, the website was updated with a new version of the “lickpiece” video as well as with a new logotype, this time set in Grow by Dinamo.
The used version of Grow depends on the viewport width: narrow devices use Grow ACDEF, wider devices use Grow ABCDEF with more line details.

At the annual meeting of German art school galleries, curators and directors meet to discuss contemporary ideas of curating- and museum-education. Each year, the meeting takes place at a different art school (or its respective gallery).

Kai Bernau’s Lyon typeface family, released by Commercial Type, is used throughout the book in its Text and Display variants.

The book design is rather restrained: only a few (rather small) type sizes, bright white (the manufacturer labels it absolute white) paper and an open binding reflect the design idea of a white-cube art gallery. To give the cube a twist, the front book jacket flap is folded out instead of folded in. It casts a straight shadow to interrupt the flat, white surface and partially hides the cover; in a way like a physical door would block your view before entering a gallery.

The corporate identity for Musikakademie Saarbrücken (Musical school Saarbrücken) uses solely the freshly released Droulers by French type designers Bureau Brut and relies on a logo system consisting of three variants, one for each aspect of the Musikakademie business: Their musical school, a small concert hall and an exhibition room.

Thanks to the special interior architecture of the school building, all of these aspects share the very same footprint. Movable walls and modular seating can be quickly rearranged and transform the musical school into a concert hall within about 30 minutes.

The movable walls, plus the idea that a musical school’s main subject would be practice and repetition (among other values, of course!) were the main inspiration behind the identity. Droulers’ closed counters and origin in contemporary dance were a good fit to the spatial characteristics of the school building.

Droulers is used in a limited range of sizes only and set in two interlocking rhythms. Stationery, business cards, postcards and gift vouchers are all printed in deep black on beige-colored offset paper.

Stationery — the Musikakademie logotype is printed on the backside of the semi translucent beige paper. The client may check the appropriate logo variant (or all of them) that corresponds with the letter subject.

It’s a field of science that deals with all kinds of promenades and walks. Basically, strollologists research about environment perception. Prominent researchers in this field are Lucius Burckhardt and Martin Schmitz, among others.“Knick-, Senk-, …” illustrates the field with two works by Burckhardt himself:
— a conversation he held with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Annemarie Burckhardt
— an essay of his about the neccesity of the World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte
It should be noted here that the Völklinger Hütte serves as the S_A_R Projektbüro headquarters as well.

Early in the project, we translated strollological ideas into book design parameters: We wanted a smallish book, we wanted to subtly change the book’s atmosphere, we wanted to evoke a feeling of “being neither here nor there” and, of course, we wanted to have a nice walk together.
So two papers, similar in color but different in haptics, take turns every 16 pages and are bound with a spiral binding. The books are then flipped open randomly. Every page may be a cover, and you are in for a walk. Be aware of stumbling though, as there are three screenprinted bookboards: one right up front, and two in front of the crucial artist exchange chapters (one for projects in Saarbrücken and one for those in Weimar). Their job is to provide a little orientation, to make the book more sturdy (due to the lack of a “normal” hardcover) and to serve as bookmarks for the exchange parts.

Additional information is provided by pictograms (they are explained on each bookboard) and a tab index — one tab for each of the five chapters.
If you look very closely though, the type itself may give orientation, as well:

The running titles and covers are set in our very own Promenadologie Grotesk. The typeface was designed with Prototypo as a (not technically, but in looks) variable font morphing in twelve cuts between angular (Knick-), sunken (Senk-) and stretched (Spreizfuß) styles — and the combination of them. Throughout the book, Promenadologie Grotesk iterates through its variants and then back again, so that the book ends with the same font as it starts with. Prototypo provided fantastic support when we imported our design-space values from a CSV file with exact values.
In contrast to the Promenadologie Grotesk, our body copy is set in robust and snappy Stanley by Ludovic Balland, headlines (albeit not in Poster size) in Stanley Poster.

Walking across the harvest moon is the tenth annual installment of artmix, a local artist residency and cooperation between the Luxemburgish Annexes Bourglinster and German Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken galleries. This year, Walking across the harvest moon starts at Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken and will be on display at Saarländische Galerie in Berlin, as well.

The catalogue (and the exhibition poster, printed on its backside) uses Nordvest by Nina Stössinger and Forma DJR by David Jonathan Ross, but never side-by-side. The catalogue is printed in four spot colors that are added perpetually as more people were involved in the creation of a shown artwork. Color usage translates, so to say, directly into the amount of collaboration. Color Library, a research project at ECAL, was of great help to generate the color separations.
The exhibition poster is printed in copper only and resembles mid-century, NASA-era designs, but with a vegetable (agrarian even) twist.

In the early nineties, Matthias Marx and Paul Ludwig — two pastors from Eppelborn, Saarland — were travelling through France. Accidentaly, in the small town of Angers in the Pays de la Loire, they stumbled upon an exhibition of tapestry master Jean Lurçat. To say they were hooked would be a huge understatement:
Today, twenty-five years later, their hometown hosts a museum dedicated solely to the work of Jean Lurçat. In August 2017, the museum — headed by Matthias Marx — celebrated its silver jubilee.

Very sadly, Cụ Rùa was found dead on January 10th, 2016. From that day on, all records were outfitted with an obituary notice. An Interview with Cu Rua may very well be the last vocal statement of a very fine and legendary creature.

The 5 letters from the band’s name are rearranged (E is even merged with A) and stacked into a big square shape, seen through die-cut holes in the sleeve. On the back of the inner sleeve, are drawn esoteric symbols on white background, each one matching one of the holes.

When the inner sleeve is removed, holes reveal track names and credits, matching the point size of the record label.

The LP is printed in two spot colors (PMS Violet and 802 Neon Yellow) and comes in a screenprinted PVC overbag. As soon as you pull the record out of the overbag, the album artwork starts to move and sucks you right into a mesmerizing vortex.

The animation technique was patented back in 1896 by W. Symons and premiered in “The Motograph Moving Picture Book”. Today, it is mostly known by the name “kinegram”.

The YAGOW LP is an early use of the revived Hershey Fonts, a type family with roots just as obscure as the music on the record. Frank Grießhammer dug deep and told their story at TypeCon2015 in Denver. The LP type system is a combination of different Hershey Fonts: Yagow’s “logo” is rendered in Hershey Italian Gothic, a set of Lombardic caps that A. V. Hershey modeled after Will Bradley’s Missal Initials (ATF, 1904). The whirlwind-like arranged track listing uses the “simplex” (single-stroke sans serif) roman, which is an adaptation of an alphabet found on Leroy lettering sets. Track numbers are in Simplex Script, with side labels in bold letters from Hershey’s “complex” alphabets.

Minotaur Sansand Shatter join the Hersheys and add a bold touch to the LP release and concert advertising banners.

Our catalogue displays all 42 submissions on bright white paper (Heaven42 Absolute White) next to a range of indices, texts and lists on light grey paper. Each paper uses different typefaces, namely a combination of PX Grotesk for the white and Suisse Works for the grey sections.

A map of the south-western German state of Saarland with all projects, both winners and submissions, stretches from the cover flap right onto the title page. That general focus on location data (also in the project spreads) transforms the exhibition catalogue into a handy travel guide to “good architecture”.

da-da-da is a gallery for artists and designers. It lives right inside mm, m’s (=our) front window. The third exhibition (to be seen from December 2016 until February 2017) is organised and designed by ourselves. Coincidentally our small office turned one year old a month before and pre-Christmas madness was circulating among our friends, so we decided to combine the exhibition opening with a holiday-themed party.

How did this come together? It started with a Hobo specimen that Nick Sherman found in ADmagazine and shared on Flickr — what a fantastic piece! And as James Edmondson was about to release Hobeaux Rococeaux right when I stumbled upon Nick’s post, we kind of knew what to do.

Originally we wanted to have “where graphic ideas are realized” as a first teaser to announce our gallery project, but — as always — we were a little late with planning and then opted for another solution. But graphic ideas never die. Holiday season came and somehow it all fell in place: we wanted to invite all our friends for mulled wine, we wanted a forest and of course we finally wanted to put up something of our own in our da-da-da window (… after having invited two guest artists).

And here we are: “where ideas are real”. We found the graphic to be entirely optional, so we dropped it. The installation consists of Nordmann fir trees, gold foil, birch plywood, improvised concrete fir tree stands and hand-painted Tick posters.